SPECIFIC OBSERVATIONS ON THE WADING BIRDS. 245 



bird, of which numbers of specimens might easily have been 

 procured for examination. The expkxnation is perhaps to 

 be found in the fact that modern authorities of the first 

 rank state that the Godwit is not a ivinter bird at aU. My 

 friend Mr. Howard Saunders, in his excellent revision of 

 Yarrell's " British Birds," describes it as a bird mainly of 

 double passage {i.e., spring and autumn) and rarely occurring 

 on our coasts in winter : and Mr. Seebohm, in his " Mono- 

 graph of the Charadriiihe," says that only " a few stragglers 

 occasionally remain during winter." Whatever their distri- 

 bution may be elsewhere, this is certainly not the case on 

 the north-east coast, where the Godwit is one of the most 

 abundant of our winter wildfowl, and may always be found, 

 thousands strong, throughout the hardest winters and most 

 protracted frosts. 



These winter Godwits are all blue — some in the uniform 

 ash-grey dress of maturity ; the young in the shaded or 

 marbled stage still showing traces of their former mottled 

 plumage, especially on the tertiaries. 



In their handsome ruddy summer plumage, the Godwits 

 are all but unknown on this coast. On their southern passage 

 a rare chance straggler in red dress may once in ten years be 

 obtained among the thousands of young birds in August ; 

 but it is clear the old birds at that season take a different 

 route to the young. They probably pass to the eastward, 

 via the Baltic and Continental Europe. 



On the northward passage (in May) adults appear to be 

 entirely unknown. Our winter residents leave before acquir- 

 ing summer dress, and the migratory Godwits from southern 

 countries appear to strike off from the British coast about 

 East Anglia. That is, they " take their departure " for the 

 North Sea passage from, say, Norfolk, instead of continuing 

 their northward course along the line of our coast. 



Knots, arriving in August, are extremely abundant all the 

 winter. A few old red birds (in summer plumage) are occa- 

 sionally met with in August ; but appear quite unknown in 

 May, when going north. 



Grey Plover arrive about mid-September, all i/ouiifi birds ; 

 and large numbers spend the winter here. Adults in breeding 



